Posted
by
ScuttleMonkeyon Monday May 11, 2009 @03:53PM
from the crowd-sourced dept.

Drivintin is one of many who have written to tell us about how The Pirate Bay has taken an interesting approach to the 30 million SEK fine levied in their recent court case (which they said they wont pay). "The bill inspired anakata to devise a plan involving sending money to Danowsky's law firm, but not to pay the fine of course which they say will never be paid. Anakata's clever plan is called internet-avgift, internet-fee in English. Anakata encourages all Internet users to pay extremely small sums around 1 SEK (0.13 USD) to Danowsky's law firm, which represented the music companies at the Pirate Bay trial. The music companies will not benefit from this, instead it will cost them money to handle and process all the money."

The summary is incomplete here. They also asked users to request their payment to be reversed as 'false payment', and thats where the extra fees come from, as the swedish law firm is obligated to process them and send back to the payer.

Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm (aka anakata) recieved a bill for the 30 million SEK that he, along with Peter Sunde (aka brokep), Fredrik Neij (aka TiAMO), and Carl Lundstrom, was fined in the verdict of the Pirate Bay trial just over three weeks ago. The bill inspired anakata to devise a plan involving sending money to Danowskyâ(TM)s law firm, but not to pay the fine of course which they say will never be payed. Anakataâ(TM)s clever plan is called internet-avgift, internet-fee in English. Anakata encourages all Internet users to pay extremely small sums around 1 SEK (0.13 USD) to Danowskyâ(TM)s law firm, which represented the music companies at the Pirate Bay trial. The music companies will not benefit from this, instead it will cost them money to handle and process all the money.

The plan can be called a Distributed Denial of Dollars attack (DDo$). The plan is an away-from-keyboard DDoS attack. DDoS attacks involve lots of users overloading the victim with internet traffic damaging their ability to provide services. Money, instead of Internet traffic is used in this case. The victim is Danowskyâ(TM)s law firm which represented the IFPI at the Pirate Bay trial.

A friend of anakata told Blog Pirate that the bank account to which the payments are directed has only 1000 free transfers, after which any transfers have a surcharge of 2 SEK for the account holder. Any internet-fee payments made after the first 1000, which includes the law firmâ(TM)s ordinary transfers, will instead of giving 1 SEK, cost 1 SEK to the law firm. Since Danowsky & Partners AdvokatbyrÃ¥ is a small firm, all the transactions are handled by hand. Handling all payments will be time consuming, costing the law firm in productivity. Maybe it will even affect their success in other cases.

Additionally if after paying the internet-fee you determine that your payment was erroneous, Swedish law states that you can request the money back, putting an additional load on Danowskyâ(TM)s law firm.

Since the Pirate Bay crew was provided with such clear, logical, and well explained methods for calculating the damages in the trial, an explanation on how the internet-fee was calculated is provided. Use the formula below, substituting anything anywhere, to check that the internet-fee really is 1 SEK.formel

[MATH DIAGRAM GOES HERE]

The name internet-avgift, as well as the layout of the site is based on tv-avgift and they layout of its site. Radiojanst, a state owned company, is responsible for collecting TV license fees in Sweden.

I believe the idea here is to make the payment for them and in the event that TPB was found to not be liable for the damages, everybody that paid will be able to retract their payment at the processing expense of the law firm.
Not simply pay and ask for your money back.
I could be wrong and it could be THAT exploitable, but that's how I understood it at least.

I think this is the root cause of the pirate bay's entire problem with the local MAFIAA.

Apparently the word "avgift" translates as "fee." So, the MAFIAA saw that the pirate bay was facilitating the gifting of all kinds of audio-visual material, they thought the pirate bay was raking in the fees and so the MAFIAA wanted their cut.

Has anyone explained to the MAFIAA that none of the users gave the pirate bay any fees?

Sounds like fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud. My guess is the TPB guys are asking for more fines and jail time.

I'd also be interested how it is that someone sending me some kind of wire transfer would obligate me paying the costs of that transfer. I could understand if I was running some kind of online service where you gave me your credit card info and my software then turned around submitted that information for billing. I can't imagine a law firm providing that kind of billing service.

It's not a wire transfer. It's internet banking, and in North America, the majority of banks charge businesses for transactions above whatever number they've paid to be able to accept, akin to going over your minutes on a cell phone. apparently, Sweden has a similar banking system. But I do agree, it sounds like fraud on the part of the people who give the payments and ask for them back. However, based on TPB trial, TPB people would be the one held accountable for the actions of others.

That depends on why they request that the payment be returned. If they wait until the conviction and fine are (hopefully) overturned, then the payment was indeed in error and they have every right to request a refund.

I do agree that this is a rather underhanded thing to do, but at the same time the contrarian in me thinks it's ingenious:)

Agreed. In an american court this would be a slam dunk for censure as the payee is clearly acting in bad faith with no desire to obey the legally mandated terms of the settlement.

This whole trial has revolved around bad faith for me. In a wholly technical sense, they have done nothing wrong. But their intent has clearly been to defraud/infringe copyright/etc.

It's just like the whole situation with Grokster. They marketed themselves specifically as a tool to download copyrighted content, and the courts ruled that that was clearly Inducement [wikipedia.org] and that they were therefore liable.

TPB says, when confronted, "We have no control over what people put on our service" and then they turn around and specifically mock the people who complain about it. That just doesn't fly with the judicial system.

I don't use P2P but for everyone else I say go for it. Rob those bastards blind. Why? One sentence: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. Think about that for a minute. That man has been worm food (or a Popsicle depending on who you believe) for a half a fricking century and yet his first work, one made when cars were started with a crank and antibiotics were just a crazy dream, is STILL under copyright.

Copyrights were a CONTRACT, nothing more. In return for a LIMITED copyright We, The People got a richer Public Domain. Instead they used outright bribery to corrupt our politicians and buy our laws away from us. So I say screw the thieving bastards. Let them rot. They used their money to steal our public domain away from us so if someone wants to steal from the thieves I say more power to them. I just can't be bothered because I honestly think their product is shit and isn't even worth stealing. But frankly expecting us to feel so sorry for those thieving bastards [wikipedia.org] is just pushing it too far. Put the copyrights back to the way they were for over a century and quit robbing our public domain!

Copyrights were a CONTRACT, nothing more. In return for a LIMITED copyright We, The People got a richer Public Domain.

This is an American-centric view on copyright. It may well be true in the U.S., but in Europe, it's called Authors' rights [wikipedia.org], and those are viewed more as inherent rights of the author towards his creations, and not as a public contract.

I don't know how the law works in Sweden, but in most English speaking countries fraud requires some element of misrepresentation and some means to benefit from that misrepresentation. You don't have either in this case.

I live in Norway (country next to sweden). And the way banking works here is that it doesn't cost ME anything to transfer money. But companies have to pay for every little part of their banking, so they have to pay to send/receive money.

As for the "reversed false payment". That's a law that says if someone accidentally transfers money to someone and then makes the recipient aware of the mistake, then the recipient is obliged to return the money. There was an interesting case where a woman had made a typo in the bank account field and transferred a large amount of money to a total stranger. The total stranger then used all the money on gambling. Once the mistake had been found out it was too late (seeing as how all the money was gone), so the woman took the total stranger to court and won.

I'm not sure how applicable this is seeing how the amount of money is so small, but i guess it might still be valid.

I'm not sure how applicable this is seeing how the amount of money is so small, but i guess it might still be valid.

Well, I don't really see how they're going to argue credibly that thousands of people "accidentally" transferred tiny sums of money to the same law firm just after the public request to do so from the TPB guys, so I don't really see how it's going to be applicable at all.

I would expect to see a virus by the end of the week doing exactly what they have suggested, donating 1 SEK at a time at several minute intervals. It might even be so kind as to ask for a credit card number, before doing it, or offer a maximum number of transfers. Maybe put this virus up on TPB, labeled as "Windows 7 Keygen".

This way, next week when this "virus" is picked up on, anyone using it can claim that it infected their computers and stole their credit card information.

I think intentionally sending someone money and then calling your bank and saying it wasn't intentional easily qualifies as fraud. Proving that one person intentionally did something may be hard. Proving fifty thousand people doing something within a short period of time, beginning right after a very public request to do so... not so hard.

Wouldn't it only be fraud if you paid and received the service for which you paid just to keep the service and take your money back? It seems the "service" or good your putting your money on is the record companies 'bill' so if you pay a portion and request your money back before the bill is paid in full the bill is still owed and your just paying to help-a-friend kind of thing

It's fraud in the US if you do it for gain. Example: You go to Walmart, buy a TV and call your credit card company telling them the TV was broken and walmart wouldn't take it back. They would do a chargeback on Walmart and that would constitute fraud.

It's not quite that simple in this case. If you contribute 1 SEK towards TPB's fine and then have to ask for it back later when(if) a retrial finds them innocent, that's hardly fraud. Not sure if it will work the way they're expecting though.

I know in the US, my understanding(IANAL) is that retailers are only required to accept $50 in coins for any debt. Sweden may have similar laws precluding this law firm from being required to accept payments below a certain amount.

Just paying 1 SEK will cause extra fees for the firm once the 1000 free transactions for the account has been used up. After that, it costs 2 SEK to process the 1 SEK payment. Therefore, they lose 1 SEK every time you pay 1 SEK. The 'false payment' is a double whammy, but not required.

Maybe 2-3000 people will do it.
First they get the 1000 SEK
Then they pay that 1000 SEK for the next 1000 SEK
and this will maybe cost them 1000 SEK
Please provide better plan.

1SEK is cheap. Maybe 1000 people will do it once. Maybe another 1000 will do it twice. Maybe 500 will do it three times. Maybe 250 will do it five times. Maybe 150 ten times. Maybe 50 fifty times. Maybe another 50 one hundred times. And, when all is done, TPB, may be forced to pay. Then they'll pay the whole fine in 1SEK increments.

How do I go about doing this? I'm in the US, and I don't know how to use the given address to process an electronic transfer.

Hell yes, I'll send them a nickel - then ask for it back!!! This is funny as hell. (And yes, I DO enjoy expressing my contempt of officials and/or officious boobs. It is MUCH more enjoyable when done face to face, but this will work for me!)

Bad justice or not, I'm contemptuous of people who think taking work product from anyone without compensation is a valid and moral way of correcting a bad business model.

A complete boycott of sales combined with no illegal copying would have a much greater significance.

Well then it's a good thing TPB guys didn't download anything. Maybe you should go after the actual copyright infringers? What's that? This may not be right but is easier? That's fine, just make sure your bribe is big enough to get your personal law enacted since that would be "good" business in your world as that's what's being done here.

Perhaps you didn't read that the judge is drinking buddies with the prosecution? The judge belongs to several - uhhh - "fraternities" whose goal is to enrich the *iaa's of the world? Perhaps you missed the fact that a jail term was handed down for what amounts to a civil matter? Or, maybe the fact that this court (let alone the judge) has no jurisdiction over the servers? (I'm not certain whether the court has jurisdiction over the company or not, but the servers are definitely beyond the court's jurisdiction - I should find out where TPB is incorporated as a business)

I'm not savvy enough to explain a whole lot more, but, yes - this kangaroo court is so flawed and tainted that any lawyer in the world should be embarassed to even read about it. Everyone involved in the prosecution whored themselves out shamelessly.

No, a judge who was potentially biased, and had a previous professional relationship with a procescutor applied law in a way not previously applied before. That is why people believe it unfair. Frankly, I'd accept it if it had been a judge without those issues who'd given the verdict.

I had a friend in grad school whose credit card company screwed up his billing to the tune of 56 cents. He turned on the TV, poured himself a drink, and sat on the phone talking (wasting the time of) various people for hours over days until they just gave him the 56 cents (they never admitted wrong doing).

I remember this because I visited his apartment on the second day of his quest and thought to myself: "He's still at this?". While he was on the phone, the TV cut to breaking news of OJ Simpson leading police on a chase in a white Bronco. The CC company gave up about the same time as OJ.

I had a friend in grad school whose credit card company screwed up his billing to the tune of 56 cents. He turned on the TV, poured himself a drink, and sat on the phone talking (wasting the time of) various people for hours over days until they just gave him the 56 cents (they never admitted wrong doing).

I remember this because I visited his apartment on the second day of his quest and thought to myself: "He's still at this?". While he was on the phone, the TV cut to breaking news of OJ Simpson leading police on a chase in a white Bronco. The CC company gave up about the same time as OJ.

So you mean to say the credit card company is still out there looking for the real overbiller?

To help pay for compensation, I shall contact my banking establishment to inquire if there is any possible way to make daily recurring payments of Superman III sized amounts [wikipedia.org] of money to Danowsky's law firm.

I assume there's an equivalent of "contempt of court" over there, and probably that would let the firm on the receiving end sue for damages. Is this really the best time for them to be just digging themselves in deeper?

Are they working on the assumption that the Law and the Government are basically impotent?

Reminds me of people who try to pay the government in pennies, or I guess that dimes would be more appropriate in this case. However, it's the pirate bay who owes the money, and need to pay, not 'random people'. I suppose that they could collect the (I'm guessing) coins and haul it to them in wheelbarrows, but it's likely that's been done to lawyers already and it's somehow prohibited.

I have a hard enough time remembering all of my details enough to satisfy the people at whatever utility I'm trying to pay. I've had a conversation on several occasions with the operator about "I just want to pay my bill. I don't need a balance, I don't care the due date, I don't want any information. I just want to give you money." And they can't help me without my PIN, password, elementary school, etc.

It took me a while to figure it out, but it really is in their best interest long term to make it as difficult as possible for me to pay a bill. They then get to add on late charges, etc. The credit card companies all just got reamed for similar.

Now there's a flaw in our economy that's waiting to be exploited. Handling fees that are higher than the amount received, effectively draining the company of cash.

It would also drain resources and create massive amounts of paperwork. Even though the process may be mostly automated I'd hate to revise those books, assuming enough people had done this.

Kind of like a distributed denial of service attack.

Of course it's easily remedied by blocking all cash transfers under a certain amount. I guess you're not obliged to accept money, but still it'd cause some extra work. Probably not enough to bring any given company down, but an interesting thought nonetheless.

Depending on the law in your jurisdiction, you might be obligated. At least in the US, businesses aren't obligated to sell you goods or services for legal tender if they don't feel like it; but creditors are obligated to accept legal tender as payment for debts.

"The pertinent portion of law that applies to your question is the Coinage Act of 1965, specifically Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled "Legal tender," which states: "United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.""

TPB are, obviously, not in the US and the law may well be different and paying in the equivalent of pennies might fall under some sort of "court's discretion to smack down raging assholes" provision.

If 30 million people each pay one Sek, how does that not pay the fine? And does Sweden not have some sort of teeth to their court-imposed penalties whereby simply not paying means people go to jail?

There are these things called processing fees. The point is to send them an amount that is less than the amount it takes the process the incoming amounts and as such they use money on each transaction. This is pretty standard for services like Paypal or other internet money transfers.

That was supposed to be "they lose money on each transaction". Also after they've lost money on each transaction they want the people to demand the money back which adds further processing fees on top of what they've already lost. Basically you get 30 million people doing this and they end up losing more money than the fine is.

This is why in some stores that accept credit cards you will see signs saying that you may not use credit for purchases less than X.XX amount. This is because small transactions like that actually cost them more money than they make.

Those signs are (probably) in violation of their Merchant Agreement. For instance:

Well, with that kind of authoritative inside knowledge, what could possibly go wrong?

Anyone who imagines this is a way to bankrupt a company, as opposed to just giving them money, is as dumb as this idea is. And any defendant who thinks that attempting to bankrupt the opposing party's law firm is a good response to losing their case... well, dumb doesn't go halfway far enough.

Anyone who imagines this is a way to bankrupt a company, as opposed to just giving them money, is as dumb as this idea is.

How is it giving them money when the transaction ends up being a net loss for the receiver when the processing fees are applied? To top that off they also want people to ask for the payment to be reversed which also adds further processing fees on the company receiving the money.

Just how many transaction do you think they'll allow to occur before the law firm, or more likely their bank, either closes the account to incoming cash, or more likely simply bounces all amounts under a certain figure? The bank is the one who would levvy this alleged 2 SEK fee, yet they have absolutely nothing to gain from playing along with this dumb game.

And any defendant who thinks that attempting to bankrupt the opposing party's law firm is a good response to losing their case...

I don't think they are trying to hurt the law firm at all: any costs to the law firm in the performance of their responsibilities in the case are, one would presume, billable costs to the client, who is the real target.

Indeed. I always find that the best target for my shenanigans is a law firm. It's not like they have a bunch of people sitting around looking for people to sue. These transactions are not covered under the traditional currency/check laws. At least in the US, even a penny is legal tender and can't be rejected because of its denomination (although you can for other reasons. ie: the credit union at work has stopped taking change citing floor weight restrictions). But then these aren't using currency at all. Af

Money that random people on the internet choose to pay the law firm has nothing to do with paying the fine. They are under no obligation to accept money from random people, or in anyway consider it payment of the fine.

And they will not go into a minus. It isn't going to happen. Banks in general do not chose to let themselves become stooges in schemes designed to annoy their customers. Particularly successful law firms.

On the one hand, I applaud them as Magnificent Bastards for devising a plan by which they can stick it to the big corps.. but on the other hand, I wonder whether it's really wise at this point to poke them with a stick like that.

Car analogy: That's like using a bullhorn to tell the cops outside your house that you'll be out shortly to stick a banana in their tail pipe. When you get there, you'll find a 46" diameter tail pipe and you'll only have a one banana.

TPB may have gotten themselves in trouble, and been convicted by a biased court, but playing silly games isn't going to solve any problems. Childish acts, even if committed by thousands of kids on the inernet, will never amount to more than a flea on the war machine that is corporate greed. They have an organized team fueled by money, and you've got pent-up angst fueled by living in your mom's basement.

There is that priest-radical in Poland, who is known as Father Rydzyk, and all young people hate him and his movement. So they decided support him by sending 0.01 PLN (about 0.003 USD) each. Lots of students did just that, each one paying 0.01 PLN.

The case was that Father Rydzyk's movement was having special deal with banks, that they were paying all fees for incoming money. So, for each 0.01 PLN paid in, they had to pay about 1 USD - now this where Swedish guys had the idea from!

For some reason one of the british tabloids was running some kind of investigation where they encouraged members of the public to send in letters and artifacts protesting against gay rights. A few people i knew researched the royal mail freepost they had on their incoming address and realized it'd take any second-class mail package.

That's definitely easier than abusing the banking system and pissing of a law firm that is known for it's bad temper with these silly "dog poop on the porch"-shenanigans. Doesn't exactly speak for the integrity of the "we're innocent" point the guys are trying to make when they start calling for crap like that. Even when it's hearsay evidence from some unrelated third party. Each one will have their account registered by the lawyers and they will definitely try to do "something" against the people who actually transfer money. They'll probably find a way to get the banks to hand out the names or such. I don't know what but as we all know... they get kinda "creative" when it comes to annoying of the young'uns. To me this is just stupid. If anyone cares... wait for the second trial (which is coming -no doubt) and after we win just send them the pennies anyway but don't ask for them back. They will need the money.

Well, this will probably work just as well as that other loophole TPB found - you know, the one that made TPB legal and untouchable in Sweden...

The more I read about the PB guys, the more they appear to be a bunch of arrogant bastards who want a blank check to do whatever they want. There is certainly enough wrong with copyright law in Sweden as it stands now, but this Internet mob mentality is not the way to go about it.

To sum it up, the law firm has been DDOS:ed, the lead lawyer have received threats, as has the head of Sweden's anti-piracy board - and now this. This may be just the stunt for TPB's fans, but if you're trying to reach out to the "other side", and I have, shit like this just makes it harder.

Thanks anakata, or whatever the fuck you want to call yourself, thanks for being a childish dork and fucking everything up.

The more I read about the PB guys, the more they appear to be a bunch of arrogant bastards who want a blank check to do whatever they want. There is certainly enough wrong with copyright law in Sweden as it stands now, but this Internet mob mentality is not the way to go about it.

Then smart ass, what is the way to go about it? You see, every other idea you may have, have already been tried. When the politicians ignore the will of the people, civil disobedience is a perfectly valid method.

In some ways, it's like repackaging all of those unwanted mail solicitations, stuffing them back into the postage-paid return envelope (the one intended for your subscription slip, check, or other payment), and dropping it into the mail. The company that sent the junk not only has to pay for the postage (more than the amount normally incurred for a one-sheet reply slip), but also to discard the additional junk mail in the envelope.

Interesting, how so? Not even clever by a mile. As I see it there are several flaws present.

First of, the firm and the bank can see that the transactions are not normal and can probably work out a deal to minimise the finacial impact.

Secondly, the bank (after being contacted by the laywers) can cancel/reverse all 1 dollar/sek/... payments to the account.

In both the above cases, assuming it is possible to do, it won't really affect the lawyers, but instead office workers at the firm and bank(s). So they are hassling people that have nothing to do directly with the MPAA/RIAA/etc.

And why should the firm even accept these payments anyway, they are not even from TPB. It seems very far fetched that they would even spend the time to process any of them. Most likely they will just box them up and store them away. Who knows, maybe they can even use it to show the character of the people running/using TPB in future cases.

All in all if you want revenge, go after the right target and in a fitting manner. This just makes Gottfrid Svartholm look like a giant douche bag to me, the MPAA/RIAA/... will not be affected by this at all.

Kinda like sitting at the front of the bus when it's illegal to do so. Trivial and childish sounding yes, but society changing nonetheless.

No, it's kinda like sitting at the front of the bus, getting convicted for doing so, and then punching the judge in the face.

Just to remind, when Rosa Parks was fined for sitting in front of the bus, she appealed the decision, and rallied the Black community to (legally) boycott the buses in the area. Speaking of which, have you stopped buying (or otherwise obtaining, by any means) anything published by labels that are members of RIAA and MPAA?